Living at the Speed of Love

I’m praying that God would “do a revival”. Not in the traditional sense that Christians talk about revival – where we see loads of people in our cities who ignore God suddenly turning to Him for some reason, but a revival where we see people in His Church turning to Him, becoming more like Jesus and travelling through life at the speed of love.

Reading through some of the “one anothers” in the Bible, it’s clear how God wants us to connect with other people, how we should treat them, how we should talk about them, how we should think about them. All with the same love that He has for us. Living at the speed of love means we are never too busy for people. Our thoughts and attitudes are loving towards others. We aren’t consumed with ourselves.

Last week McKrindle Research published graphs and statistics from a survey showing that in Australia people are most attracted to religion and spirituality by seeing people living out a genuine faith.

People aren’t attracted by how many church events we go to and seems they don’t care about our miraculous stories. They probably don’t care about the details of our doctrine and how much we donate to the church each week.

People are attracted when they see us living a genuine faith.

We don’t have to have every faith question doctrinally checked and answered correctly according to some Bible College. It’s OK to say to someone “I don’t know…”. It’s OK to not be the perfect churchgoer. We don’t have to have memorised the “this is how you become a Christian speech” with accompanying diagrams and overhead projector presentations. Because that’s not what God wants from us. He wants us to be honest, share our faith, share our hope, share our love. Because He loves us.,

He wants us to love Him and to love others. He wants us to travel through life at the speed of love. That’s how Jesus lived here. Helping others where we can. Meeting the needs of others. Showing kindness and gentleness. Being self controlled and not giving back bad when we get it. Being honest and sharing our struggles, sharing our unanswered faith questions, sharing the realities of life.

Travelling through life at the speed of love means understanding one another.  Here’s a beer commercial – not one I’m benefitting from, but one which encourages us to simply understand and listen to one another.

God wants us to be real in our commitment to him and to those around us. God wants us to put people first. This is the revival that we need to see in our churches, our cities and His Church. Bearing with one another, forgiving one another, showing kindness and gentleness to one another.

God is always actively showing people His love and He calls us to do the same.

Matthew 22 tells of an incident where one of the top guns of the religion most dominant in Jesus time asks him the question “of all the things that we should do – which is the most important?” Jesus told him that we should love God and love others. It isn’t complicated.

Travelling at the speed of love looks like us making time for people. Sacrificing for others. Giving to others. Doing what is right when we don’t want to do it.

Pray for revival in our churches. That those people following Jesus will truly love others the way Jesus does. That they, that we, will live lives that cause others to question our motivations and unearth the reasons we love – because He first loved us.

What does the table below from McKrindle research reveal to you?